Ruxandra Cesereanu, Noah’s Literary Ark for Gourmets. Studies and Essays in Comparative Literature, Milano, Edizioni AlboVersorio, 2023, 194 p.

Abstract

The collection of essays by the writer and researcher Ruxandra Cesereanu presents a suite of critical studies in the form of hermeneutic articulations, as reflected in the title of the volume, for an audience nursing thoroughly entrained dialogic polyvalences. The author of these studies aims to launch new critical nuances and brave hypotheses through which to immerse the reader in an exercise of comparative reading. The pillars of strength on which these demonstra­tions of literary criticism are supported shed light on the theoretical arsenal of the author. The reader goes through this volume witnessing the incubation of a layered hermeneutic where mythocriticism, psychoanalysis, history and ethics meet to delimit themselves in fine nuances or to complement each other. We must appreciate the dexterity with which Ruxandra Cesereanu precisely masters the tools of comparative reading in the dialogue she initiates, often even in the middle of dissonance, or, at first glance, of non-interstitial registers.